


what you know, what can I say

by alex_emsworth



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-10
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2018-03-29 22:47:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3913501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alex_emsworth/pseuds/alex_emsworth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything is fine as long as Kenma never knows, he figures, and this loneliness does not give him strength but a goal. It does not come easily, but slowly, steadily, he is learning, fooling himself into believing it’s only a matter of time, into believing that he’s been doing so, so well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what you know, what can I say

**Author's Note:**

> To the love of my life, who's been putting up with me for four years now, and wishes to carry on.

He has no idea when it started, the shying away, the _keeping_ away — it was almost unnoticeable at first. Two more inches between them. The opposite side of the table. Not leaning _on_ but leaning _forward,_ adding some empty space. A safety zone, because that is the only way he can think of to deal with himself and his lovely heartache that rules over him, making him a mess so unlike himself he wants to throw up. 

It has to go away, all of it, but it is so hard, so painful — touching has always come easily to Kuroo, and personal boundaries meant nothing to him; while awareness comes readily, restraint does with great reluctance. He carves them out of his heart to throw away, all those little gestures, the half-hugs, the tugs on Kenma’s sleeves and friendly shoves, the flutter of fingers when they pass things between each other, the hardest part of them all, the most intimate, the loveliest. 

He sheds them all like a snake sheds its skin, and feels the absence of it within seconds; without Kenma’s distant yet warm assurance he is alone and miserable, and irritable at best. There aren’t many people he likes to touch, and he’s the only one Kenma lets himself be touched by; without this subtle connection they both fall apart.

So much for the joy of being in love with your best friend, then. So much for love at first sight, and so much for high school romance. If there’s any humor to it Kuroo is probably just not in on the joke.

He makes it a point not to look, anything not to give himself away, but he knows he’s losing; his own humor gets darker and his mood turns sour, but he follows Kenma vigorously, with devotion enviable and amiable at the same time.

 _He’s mine,_ Kuroo tells everyone, not with words but with the way he looms dangerously around the setter, and with the looks he shoots at anyone who gets close enough to stir his attention. _He’s mine,_ in a wave of a hand, in a bottle of water he passes over, in the way he hunches his shoulders, hands in pockets, when they walk home; controlled menace, strangely satisfactory but never enough. 

_(You are so observant,_ Kuroo thinks, watching Kenma not watch where he’s going, engrossed in the game he’s playing, _don’t you see me trying to unsee you?)_

A chill runs between them now, and it’s so noticeable even Lev can tell. “Did Kenma-san and Kuroo-san fight?” He asks Yaku, whispering furiously, but everyone can hear them, and Kuroo sees, feels the way Kenma’s body tenses as he strains to listen, too. 

_(Did they fight? Are they fighting now, in this silence so dense? Will it end tomorrow, or not at all?)_

Kuroo knows they are all grateful to Lev, the goofy bastard, that he was the one to voice it. He always gets away with anything, and Kuroo is so devastated by the past month of hiding the obvious from the ever-perceptive Kenma that all he can come up with is make them run ten extra lapses at the end of practice: no jokes, no sarcastic remarks, not even a smug smile, no nothing. He’s exhausted, and the next to last thing he wants is to talk about it; hear them talk about it is worse. His authority is slipping away from him with his sanity, and he’s more and more afraid that soon they are going to see him for what he really is when he lets his guard down: a teenager in love, questioning everything and trusting no one, hanging on a wire. Vulnerable, hungry for attention, longing to be left alone. 

There is not much of what’s left of his guard now, but he still can’t let it go. 

A day comes when he recoils so violently from a sudden, accidental touch of Kenma’s bared shoulder in the locker room that it startles them both; it is the day that Kenma looks at him coldly and with the slightest contempt. He doesn’t say anything, but _“I didn’t know you were such a coward”_ is what Kuroo can read in his eyes, and it’s plain that he’s been found out, but he refuses to accept it still. 

_It’s all right,_ he tells himself over his beating heart, gracelessly turning away in a hurry, still playing it cool, _it’s all right as long as I don’t say it out loud._

It’s Friday, and as silent as they are on their way home they might have gone alone and spent the weekend apart, but habits do not die that easily. 

_It must have been love at first sight indeed,_ he thinks a week later, sadly amused, some acceptance of the inevitable on his part for once as he watches Kenma gather his things to disappear from the classroom at the end of the day; it’s something he’s used to doing, but Kuroo still can’t fully believe it that he’s in love, and it’s the first and only secret he keeps from Kenma. 

Everything is fine as long as Kenma never knows, he figures, and this loneliness does not give him strength but a goal. It does not come easily, but slowly, steadily, he is learning, fooling himself into believing it’s only a matter of time, into believing that he’s been doing so, so well. 

At least it lends some novelty to the sheer triviality of their quiet shared life, he smirks; Kenma takes it as a greeting, nods, and they take off to home. 

The problem is that they know each other better than they know themselves; years of quiet contemplation, of attentive consideration, of shared thoughts — all of that filled their silences with meaning and comfort, and trust, all of which Kuroo chose selfishly to discard in favor of nothing in particular. 

He was bound to fail, after all, as was anyone who tried to fool Kenma, and he is a traitor now, weak enough to trail after Kenma into his room yet not strong enough to be part of it like he used to. 

There is no place for loathing or fear in his heart, he discovers with misplaced warmth, only acceptance, and anticipation, and love, if he must find a word for it. 

In the room filled with things used rarely, if at all, if Kenma even knew of their existence, synthetic sounds of an old handheld console crush the air while Kuroo pretends to read; the blinds are closed against the sun and the heat, and if he tries hard enough he can see specs of dust floating, dancing slowly around him, highlighted by the lone streak of sunlight that got past the shield Kenma always puts up — a glitch in the texture, no more. 

He doesn’t mind, can’t even bother, lets himself be carried away by the game he can’t even see. By now he knows it all: a walk, a dialogue, a battle, another dialogue all marked by different violations of a slow and unobtrusive flow of the late Sunday evening. 

The game Kenma is playing is suddenly the most interesting story in all worlds, and its sounds are music enough for Kuroo to forget himself.

It ends abruptly, with a loud clap of the console closing, and the sound of the hero’s jump stopped in midair still rings as Kenma states, without judgment or even so much as a silent accusation, a mere fact that speaks for itself, underlined with the subtlest annoyance,

“You’ve been reading that page for ten minutes by now.”

Kuroo doesn’t reply, looking slightly away but keeping Kenma in his sight, causing him to sigh, ever so lightly, and try again.

“Why did you come?”

_I wanted to spend time with you._

“You won’t come out to play,” he says, and it’s almost the same truth.

No statement that could pass for human interaction comes back, and Kuroo’s forced laughter dies, barely born; their silence becomes empty for the first time that he can remember, but how can he be sure if he doesn’t remember anything but this?

“What are we, Kuro?” Kenma persists; he doesn’t talk much, but when he does it is always a devastation.

 _More than I’d ever thought we would, and less than I’d ever thought I’d want us to,_ Kuroo thinks with a heavy heart, but there’s lightness in him when he allows himself to say,

“Family.”

“Right,” Kenma shoots back; was it a chuckle? Is that a smile? “Then why are you avoiding me?”

“I’m not.”

“Try again.”

“I’m not,” Kuroo spits out, insistent, — even the slightest disturbances throw him off balance. 

Too bad that Kozume Kenma is the biggest disturbance he has ever come across in the course of the seventeen years he’s been alive.

“You almost jumped when you bumped into me the other day,” Kenma states, accusing but not quite — he’s a master of that, offering plain observations stripped of even the hints of information, pure binary code, emotionless, assuming, always leaving those around him with their hands full wondering what it might or might not mean. 

This time, though, the message is clear: _I trusted you, and you’ve hurt me._

 _I’m sorry,_ Kuroo wants to mumble, but his mouth is so dry it wouldn’t open; he almost darts forward, he can imagine himself jumping to his feet and crossing the meter-and-a-half that lie between them to hold Kenma, to hold him close and closer in his hopeless attempt to take back the damage he’s done, but none of this happens, and the room goes on, its balance undisturbed. 

He’s been stoic for a whole month of consciously being obsessed with Kenma, he can be stoic for one more day. He can come out of this unharmed. 

Reality is unimpressive, and momentum carries him through the dull stillness of Kenma’s room; he says nothing, looking down, and with stubborn certainty he can say that Kenma does the same: they are alone, and they mirror each other as they always do, a perfect combination honed with years and experience — blissful foolishness so lovely it’s heartbreaking. 

Kuroo can hear his world crumbling down, and watches it go, his eyes darting from books on the floor to rows of games and dusted consoles; he’s sure that when he leaves today it would be soon and probably for the last time. He’s almost prepared — almost dead inside, his suicidal assuredness liberating. 

“I miss you,” Kenma says so softly it’s more like a stray wind shuffling the metal blinds, more like the fan turning. 

“What?” Kuroo asks when he can talk again, his throat sore and his tongue weighing a ton, unmovable. Prince Charming at his finest. 

Kenma regards him, not coldly, not exactly, but with chilly non-belief, as if saying, _Please don’t make me repeat myself._

The expression on his face is one that Kuroo has never seen before, and it thrills him to find out that there is still something he has to unveil about Kenma; it’s not unreadable but yields so much he doesn’t know where to look. 

Kenma’s catlike eyes lock on his, and Kuroo emits a hopeless half-laugh against his will, which comes out more like the sound of someone being choked to death. 

He gets up and gets closer; he’s trouble-bound anyway, and it’s no more than love. 

He’s not sure he can handle it, not quite, but he’s not that cowardly. 

Kuroo’s voice is still broken when he starts to speak, crawling, cornering Kenma, hovering dangerously above him. Kenma is not scared, he’s never been, it takes more than that to scare him, even now that Kuroo has regained himself, remembered who he is, with a taunting air of intimidation around him, even though his boldness is weaved of curious desperation. 

With his back pinned to the wall and Kuroo so close — closer than ever before, even closer than when they used to share a bed as kids — with his back against the wall, still clinging to his old-fashioned DS, Kenma is defiant but unshaken, even trying to hold his breath as he is, even with his fingers barely twitching, he’s vibrating with challenge. 

This is new, too, and exciting, and Kuroo can’t help savoring what he sees, gaining confidence with every second Kenma doesn’t push him away, holding on to the sweet impatience that fuels him now. 

“You know,” he says, licking his dry lips, still asking for reassurance, “when I said family, I didn’t mean like brothers.” 

That fleeting half-smile again. A nod, a permission: _If you’re going to do something, please make it quick._

Kuroo’s hand trembles slightly when he touches Kenma’s cheek: he never knew he could be this gentle, never thought that he’d get this far, and he’s dumbfounded, acting without a plan, but Kenma is still looking at him — expectantly, curiously, if a little disoriented, and Kuroo takes pleasure in watching him close his eyes when their lips meet, a wordless confession sealed with a kiss, a scene every schoolgirl must envision, sappy at best, but it doesn’t feel like that at all — it’s so hot, and tender, and it sweeps Kuroo away with its hyper-reality. 

It’s not his first kiss, but all others were accidents he’s never agreed to, and it’s his first time kissing a boy, his first time kissing _Kenma,_ so everything else up to this moment is redundant, irrelevant; the only thing that matters is that when he pushes, Kenma pushes back, ever a challenge, never passive, asking for more. Compared to this, even his wildest fantasies are nothing, and they are nothing like this. 

When the kiss is broken the magic is not; out of breath, his head giving a light spin and his cheeks slightly red, eyes unfocused, Kenma doesn’t take his hands off Kuroo’s shoulders — if anything, he fastens his grip on his shirt, hopelessly crumpled already, and it’s the best sight Kuroo has ever seen. It’s encouraging, and a familiar smile shows up on his face when he asks, his heart beating against all odds, 

“So, will you go out with me?” 

“Does it, like, involve leaving home more often?” Kenma asks back, serious and genuinely concerned, his obvious attempt to fool Kuroo into believing he can actually say no now adorable and not entirely failing. 

“Not really,” he purrs against Kenma’s ear, his words mingling with the softest playful, tickling kisses, “but that would be nice.” 

“Okay,” Kenma says after a short consideration, and Kuroo notes the way his voice sounds softer now, with a different edge, so promising, so good. “As long as you don’t do whatever it was you thought you were doing for the past month or so.” 

Kuroo laughs, genuinely this time, relieved; it was a torture, but it paid off. 

“I won’t,” he says, “I promise.” 

There is a silence, a sweet nothingness going on for a while, the two of them getting used to holding each other, to the thought of everything being possible. 

“You want anything to eat?” Kuroo tries, unable to focus on anything, no immediate thoughts in his head: he just wants to share the rest of the evening with Kenma — he wants to share life with him, really, but an evening is a place to start, — watch him, tease him; there is so much affection in him that he has no idea what to do with it, where to find peace again. “I’ll treat you to something.” 

“Only if you do something about that expression on your face.” 

“I can’t,” Kuroo says, grinning widely, kissing Kenma again until he gives in. 

When they emerge into the dump air, hot and made hotter still by the cars and buildings and street food joints, he takes Kenma by the hand, softly at first, as if still asking for permission, and Kenma smiles, making him freeze for a moment, and everything freezes with him as Kuroo holds his breath. It is a second, a fraction of it before the smile changes into a questioning look, and Kenma pulls him down the road; Kuroo smiles then, too, and with a laughter he tightens his grip on his not-just-a-friend-but-a-boyfriend’s hand, shaking his head, chasing an afterthought away. 

He allows Kenma to take the lead, and himself to be led along; while he can hold Kenma with his hands, up against a wall even, or down, pressing him into the sheets maybe, Kenma can hold him in place with a smile.


End file.
